1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a video playback device for channel browsing, and more particularly to a video playback device for channel browsing in a P2P based network.
2. Description of the Related Art
With the advent of networking communications technology, many people's daily lives are closely related to the Internet/Intranet business and are significantly influenced by the Internet/Intranet technology's evolution and revolution. More and more people use the Internet/Intranet and even access or browse the Internet/Intranet in their daily lives, whether for work, entertainment, shopping, or education, etc. The Internet/Intranet is creating new economical activities, which are altering people's traditional way of living.
It's known that IP-based TV system was proposed several years ago. The IP-based TV system provides people with the possibility of watching TV programs via internet/intranet at a location, such as at home, by using only a regular PC embedded with software or specific device (e.g. set top box). Although people may watch video contents (e.g. television shows or programs), which have been broadcasted over the internet/intranet, however, most IP-based service providers do not guarantee the quality of video contents to viewers during broadcasting. In addition, most of the local telecom carriers, on-line TV providers, and web-site companies provide the video content in their own mother or familiar languages rather than other foreign languages; for example, all the Asian Americans are difficult to receive the high quality of Asian TV programs which are originally broadcast in Asia.
In current network environments, there is wide interest for viewers to receive such TV programs provided by Internet content providers in a faster way. However, referred to FIG. 1, the conventional viewer/server network architecture does not fulfill the viewer's needs due to lack of available bandwidth of the network and heavy workload of the central server. In case of network traffic congestion, when a particular video content is being accessed by many viewers, it will take much time for downloading the complete video content from the central server.
To sum up, referred to FIG. 1 for illustrating a conventional IP-based TV system. The IP-based TV system 10 with a TV content broadcasting center 11 is responsible to deliver the TV programs to the viewer players via the Internet or intranet. It's no doubt that the IP-based TV system 10 serves the customers with English video contents, for example, in the United States. If the non-English Asian-based customers desire to receive the non-English Asian-based TV programs from the system, for example, one Chinese viewer accesses to the viewer player 13, one Korean viewer accesses to the viewer player 14, and one Japanese viewer accesses to the viewer player 15, each for being desirous of watching their own native TV programs delivered from the TV content broadcasting center 11, the system will get trouble in selection of different language types of TV programs so that these viewers' need cannot be satisfied.
A prior art of U.S. Pat. No. 5,027,400 has disclosed an approach to providing an image communication/bidirectional broadcast system such as a broadband ISDN or a cable television, and in particular, to an advertisement or commercial base bidirectional broadcast system capable of coping with various needs of subscribers for programs and advertisement. This art does not solve the situation when a viewer is desirous of watching his/her hometown TV programs during his/her traveling period.
A prior art of U.S. Pat. No. 6,973,667 has disclosed an approach to delivering media program contents to customers through multicast or unicast, and wherein a multicast delivery unit and a unicast delivery unit will deliver the data packets of the media program to customers in multicasting and unicasting fashions, respectively. Moreover, the art is to provide the time-shifting feature such as TV programs recording in the viewer sides. However, this art does not solve the time zone issues when the customers desire to watch the overseas TV programs in the same broadcast time schedule as it was broadcast in the originating time zone like East Asia regions.
A prior art of US patent No. US20030097661 has disclosed a system for providing IP centric, multi-channel and telecommunication services such as television on demand, video on demand, karaoke on demand, Internet access, and telephone services. However this art merely provide customers with TV programs and customers have no other language selections for receiving the TV programs originated by the specific language which is mother tongue to the customers.
Two prior arts of U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,191,424 and 5,206,722 have disclosed a channel selector operable in a typical cable television (CATV), and the channel selector has nothing with the application of a P2P network. Thus, it is very hard to deal with such issues occurred in the P2P environment as network bandwidth and communication delay which are very concerned with the quality of service to the network service providers in the P2P network.
In some case, if a viewer subscribed to the TV program provider would like to watch the same hometown TV programs when he/she is planning to be out of town or travel overseas, it is impossible to watch the same hometown TV programs in this case. On the other hand, the viewer may request an agency for delivering his/her hometown TV programs with high quality and resolution to watch during his/her travel period. However, high quality and resolution for broadcasting the TV programs sometimes means more bandwidth consumption when the viewer is in the session of watching TV programs via the P2P network. Besides, it is critical for delivering the TV channel browsing service to the viewer in a timely fashion when the viewer is trying to browse a new TV program from an existing TV program through his/her playback device.
Therefore, there is a need for providing a channel browsing service through the P2P network for the viewer so that he/she may still have same feeling to watch TV programs broadcast in the P2P network as he/she is used to watch TV programs broadcast in the cable system during the channel browsing session.